News Article #3

    As I was browsing through articles, I found one on New York Daily News, called "Westchester lawyer Sam Friedlander killed wife,kids,before shooting himself in murder-suicide." This was the only article that caught my eye. It was posted by Matthew Lysiak and Tracy Connor on October 19,2011. Samuel Friedlander, a lawyer, was in a bitter divorce with his wife, Amy. He killed his ten year old daughter,Molly, and his eight year old son, Gregory and tucked them back into bed. He also used a chair to kill his wife, who was only forty six years of age. After he murdered his family, he went to the basement, and shot himself with a Remington 870. Police interviewed many of their friends, and a couple of them had said that the marriage started off rocky, and never got better. Also, Amy's family never liked Samuel Friedlander. Samuel had felt that Amy was trying to take custody of the children, and making the kids hate him. The father had mental problems during that week, and many said that it was his "body" that did the killing, and not him. Police came and found the four dead bodies.
     This article made me emotional. I understand that a divorce is hard to get through, but that is no reason to kill a family. In my opinion, I think he killed the children because he did not want them to hate him after he kills his wife, which he intended to do. It might be true that he had psychological problems during that tough time, and that could have caused the murder-suicide. I do feel bad for the wife, because she went through life, worked hard, attended colleges, had kids and a successful business, and died at the age of forty six. I take the side of the wife, because she had maybe dealt with numerous problems and at one point wanted a divorce. His idea of ending a divorce, was ending a wonderful family. Killing is never an option, because people have one life to live.